January 3, 2008

Putting aside the fact that Les doesn’t seem to know what “taking the fifth means” means (it’s not as if he ever knew any lawyers, after all), isn’t whether or not Funky and Holly were there something Funky would already know?

It’s 1999. The gang is playing touch football, and Lisa is hit hard and goes down. She loses consciousness for a few minutes and when she wakes up she says “Les, I just had this terrible dream. I died, and after I was gone you aged very badly and became a pathetic loser who creeps out our daughter.” Les assures her none of this will ever happen, she adds “and Les, let’s sell all our dot.com stock right now,” and the strip continues from there.

January 1, 2008

OK! magazine has paid Jamie Lynn Spears — Britney’s 16-year-old sister — one million dollars for “the exclusive story” of Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy. Maybe I’m missing something, but exactly what details are OK! paying for? We can probably figure out the details for ourselves (though perhaps there were some things Jamie Lynn didn’t understand at the time), and anything even remotely detailed would fall under the category of child porn.

These comics first ran several years ago but even then, ever since Columbine, kids younger than Ruthie were being suspended for writing lists such as these — and Library Ladies would have been fired for not ratting them out.

Post-9/11, these lists were being called “terroristic threats,” and kids were being hauled off to the police station. In handcuffs.

All this being said, though, “I guess I’ll have to add one more name” was perversely funny.

Updated: Okay, so I was promptly informed that Summer did not in fact throw Les a human heart, and that what looks like one in his hand is merely the design on his sweatshirt (which still doesn’t explain what she’s throwing in panel 3, what he’s picking up in panel 5, and what he’s looking at in panel 7).

But here’s what I’m really wondering now, and maybe because of my near-legendary lack of artistic skills (seriously, you’d rather have Les as your quarterback than have me as your Pictionary teammate):

When you take a photograph, I can understand how an unfortunate camera angle can give you tree branches appearing to come out of somebody’s ears, or two heads appearing to be attacked to the same body, or somebody seeming to be holding a human heart — because that’s what the camera is “seeing” at the time.

But when you’re drawing a picture, starting with a white sheet of paper and adding exactly what you want to add, how do you just happen to end up with, say, Les holding a human heart? How are you not aware of this as you’re drawing it?

This really is a serious question, and not a criticism of Tom Batiuk. I sincerely do not know how this sort of thing happens, though it clearly is not uncommon.